The complexity of personal computers and, more generally, the level of sophistication attained by the Information Handling System (I.H.S.) technology has called for an increasing need for maintenance and hardware failure prevention.
Hardware monitoring systems have been developed to achieve that goal. Generally speaking a hardware monitoring system is based on the use of a specific hardware circuit—including different sensors and detecting devices which may be under control of a microcontroller—the function of which is to centralize the information provided by the sensors and reporting it to a display device. The span of monitoring may vary in accordance with the requirements of the manufacturer of the IHS system, but may cover a wide range of internal components and operating parameters, such as the rotation speed of the fan(s), the voltage of the power supply, or the internal temperature of the machine.
In order to improve the efficiency of the hardware monitoring system, the latter is generally powered-on before the general power-on of the machine. For that purpose, the hardware monitoring circuit directly receives power when the cable is plugged in the power plug, and even if the main ON/OFF switch remains switched off. The hardware monitoring system is therefore fully operational when a user decides to switch on the machine, resulting in the starting process and particularly the booting of the processor.
The powering on of the hardware monitoring system independently of the main machine has proved to be very effective in order to report information during the pre-operational phase of the machine, i.e. when the latter has not completed its booting process, or even when the process has failed.
The HP Kayak PC Workstations, for instance, include a hardware monitoring system that reports information to the user by means of a specific Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) for displaying the information which is fed back by the monitoring microcontroller. Thus basic information can be provided to the user regarding the essential hardware features: the version of the Basic Input Output System (BIOS), the configuration of the memory, and the different parameters which are checked by the microcontroller. To achieve this, the microcontroller communicates with the sensors and detectors, but also with the LCD display, by means of a serial bus, such as the System Management Bus (SMB) complying, for instance, with the well known I2C reference protocol devised by Philips Corp. The hardware monitoring features of the HP Kayak PC workstations can be found described in a white paper entitled “HP Maxilife: for the Highest Productivity and Reliability” that has been made available by Hewlett-Packard Company.
The present invention is directed to enhancing the information which can be reported to the user by the hardware monitoring system and that is inevitably hindered by the limited size and resolution of the conventional LCD display.
Since personal computers in particular are relatively low cost items, such a monitoring system should require as few PC modifications or additions as possible in accomplishing the above, so as to minimise cost and parts count.